The sound of a dial-up modem scared us when we first heard it, then as we became used to it, it turned into an annoyance. Harsh and dissonant, we did not miss it a bit when we upgraded to various kinds of broadband internet connections. But then years went by, and the only place you heard that sound was in "young people don't know these things" listicles, which just made us feel old. Yeah, I'm speaking for myself.      

Jonny Wilson, also known as Eclectic Method (previously at Neatorama), took the grating yet nostalgic sound of a dial-up connection and made it into "Dial Up Modem Song," which may get stuck in your head. If you did the Rate-a-Record segment at American Bandstand, you'd say "It has a great beat and it's easy to dance to." You have to admit, it's the best that noise has ever sounded. -via Laughing Squid

Are you single this Valentine's Day? Would carrying a ketchup bottle with you make you feel better about it? Heinz aims to fill that gaping hole in your heart with the Emotional Support Ketchup Bottle. The classic glass ketchup bottle comes with its own cap, plus a Nalgene cap for easy access on the go, a strap so that you can wear it all the time, and stickers to personalize it. Any time you feel the least bit of sadness or anxiety, just reach for your handy ketchup bottle for some tasty tomato-y comfort. In a pinch, you can even put some of your ketchup on other foods. There, that makes it all better, right? Not so fast!   

Heinz should learn a lesson here- when you concoct a marketing stunt designed to go viral, make sure the contractor you use to manufacture the product can deliver adequate inventory. Within a few hours of hitting the internet yesterday, they were completely sold out. -via Geeks Are Sexy

Update: I take that back- they've been restocked!

Ryan Reynolds brings us a full-length ad for Lay's potato chips, emphasizing the variety of available flavors. It stars Stephen Tobolowsky as Ned Ryerson, the insurance agent character he played in the movie Groundhog Day. That's right, Ryerson finds himself stuck in a time loop like the one in the movie. Keep watching and you'll soon feel empathy for his frustration as he figures out he's in hell. You'll probably feel even worse for the clerk, who has no concept of what's bothering him. She's just doing her job, kind of like how Ryerson was doing his in the movie.

Is this a Super Bowl ad? If it is, Frito-Lay would have to buy eight slots to run it, and that's expensive. But it's Frito-Lay, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. After all, people know Groundhog Day the movie more than they care about Groundhog Day the holiday. Or they could just count on the virality of the YouTube video and save a lot of money. Happy Groundhog Day! -via Digg

Have you ever considered getting a DNA test done to find out who you are related to? I was never interested. I have boxes of genealogical records that other family members compiled, and I'll probably never read them. But millions of people have taken commercial DNA tests that not only purport to identify your ethnic background, but will also connect you to others in their database who have some genetic relation to you. The news is not always good. An AskReddit thread had people sharing the stunning results of DNA tests and how they uncovered old secrets and rearranged families. Redditor theloneliestdonkey has a real horror story.

My grandfather did not die when my dad was 4 like we always thought. Instead, he faked his death, walked 1500km to the other end of the country, married a sixteen old girl and had 7 more children.

All the while leaving my grandmother to bring up the 6 children he had with her and his 2 children from an earlier marriage. Worst part was that he used the same names for the second batch of kids as his first lot.

She went on to tell us that the two families met and had a big barbecue that was quite awkward, since one side idolized their father, but hers did not. But sometimes there's a reasonable explanation, which doesn't reflect well on the company issuing the tests.

My parents and I all did dna tests and I manage their profiles- theirs were done before mine was available. They each got a panicked message from a woman on the other side of the world who had matched as their daughter. She was distraught, thinking her parents had lied to her for her entire life.

When I logged in to my account, it showed that I had no dna matches with my parents which I knew to be wrong, plus the fact my mum was a young child when this woman was born made it clear the company had swapped our results. Customer service just said ‘oh well’ and offered a new test. My family found it funny but that poor woman who had spent several days freaking out thinking her life was a lie before I got her messages and responded.

You can read many more wild stories in the reddit thread or peruse a list of the 27 best stories from it at Cracked.

(Image credit: Joo Nath)

We learned long ago that the Chicxulub asteroid impact 66 million years ago spelled the end of the dinosaurs, and most other plant and animal species on earth. Reading about the effects of that impact is chilling, but you know what would be even more chilling? To imagine what that asteroid impact would do to the earth as it is now. There were no humans around 66 million years ago, no cities, no infrastructure, no agriculture, and no national boundaries.

John D. Boswell, also known as Melodysheep (previously at Neatorama) took what we know about the asteroid impact and transposed it onto our modern world, so that we can envision just how big and earth-shattering it was. In the best-case scenario, the world population goes from eight billion to around two billion people in the first couple of days. But surviving doesn't get easier after that- it would be a real global apocalypse.

Should we be worried about an asteroid impact? Astronomers are keeping tracks of the asteroids, and are working on ways to protect our planet. Others are working out schemes to survive and ride out the apocalypse. This is a long video, but the last couple of minutes are promotional. And the visuals are stunning. -via Geeks Are Sexy 

I also found out that if you put the word Chicxulub into Google search, the asteroid rolls across your screen and you can feel the impact.  

People love to hate the font Comic Sans. It's a perfectly appropriate font to use for invitations to a child's birthday party or in a cartoon balloon. The problem was that as we learned to use personal computers for everything, Comic Sans was used inappropriately and overused until it became a joke in itself. It looks ridiculous on a warning label or a tombstone or a political billboard, but examples of all those can be found. So how did the beleaguered font come about in the first place?

The credit, or blame, goes to typographical engineer Vincent Connare. In 1994, he was working on a program for Microsoft called Microsoft Bob, which was aimed at children. The text belonging to the program's virtual assistant seemed quite harsh in Times New Roman. He was a talking dog, after all. Connare couldn't find a more appropriate font, so he looked outside of the supply of available computer fonts for inspiration and designed Comic Sans for the dog. Maybe that's why the font seems most at home overlaying an image of Doge. Now that Comic Sans is thirty years old, read the short version of its origin in an excerpt from the book Comic Sans, Is it Really That Bad? by Thomas Steeles.  -via Kottke

(Image credit: Stephen Curry)

Steve Gourley was skiing down Davis Gulch in Utah with his GoPro helmet camera on Sunday when he was caught in an avalanche. The hard slab avalanche was unintentionally triggered by another skier, and Gourley was carried along 650 vertical feet, but was not completely buried. He was wearing a backpack with emergency equipment and helmet, but no airbag. He describes his moves in a comment at YouTube.

I was able to get close to the crown and behind a lot of the mass. My main efforts were to try to stay upright and facing downhill. I ended up in a whitewater survival position which was difficult to maintain. Everyone thinks you can swim but the characteristics of the snow do not really allow for that. When you try to push off or pull on it, there may be no purchase. When you reset to try again, you can create negative gains and start to roll. I want to say the extra surface area with my poles helped to stabilize and stay on top.

We're glad he made it back okay. Despite the lighthearted music, this was a scary episode. -via Digg

Update: The video has been pulled, but you can still see it at TMZ.

(Image credit: Lietmotiv)

Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?

— Elmo (@elmo) January 29, 2024

Sesame Street's sweet young Muppet Elmo began the week on Monday asking an innocuous question. Little did he know that he opened the floodgates of despair. That Tweet got 140 million views as it went viral, and now has 12,000 comments from people sharing how they are really doing. Many of them were tragic, illuminating the mental health crisis that permeates modern life.

Been there on Nov 1, 2023

— Amanda (@redcardinalva) January 31, 2024

So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.

— Digested Brain (@digestedbrain) January 30, 2024

😭😭😭😭😭 this not a place for children Mo

— Elij Warner (@ElijWarner824) January 31, 2024

Please remember that Elmo is 5. That's a lot to put on a kid.

— 🔥 Hearts On Gwynn 🔥 (@magnaniNupae) January 30, 2024

Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature. our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes.

however I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking https://t.co/svATFv7ek8

— Hanif Abdurraqib (@NifMuhammad) January 29, 2024

Can you imagine the effect that must have on a happy little Muppet? The team behind the Muppets' accounts (they all have their own Twitter feeds) posted a followup, but for Elmo's sake, the other Sesame Street characters lent their support.

Me here to talk it out whenever you want. Me will also supply cookies. 💙🍪 #EmotionalWellBeing https://t.co/LLF7MzmouY

— Cookie Monster (@MeCookieMonster) January 30, 2024

See some representative Tweets and those by other Muppets at Buzzfeed, or read the whole Twitter thread if you dare. -via Metafilter

There have always been visionaries who predicted technological breakthroughs a long time before they became reality. But is this really so surprising? Visionaries predict things that we want, and engineers spend decades making it happen because it's what we want. Still, if we can put ourselves into the past when those predictions were made, they may well sound ridiculous to us. Tesla's idea of achieving instant global communication by sending signals and even power through the air was thoroughly laughable in its time, but then came radio, then TV, then satellites, and now wifi. We've come a long way from stringing wires along telephone poles.

But that's just technology. There are some other predictions in here that seem quite uncanny, besides Nostradamus that is, whose writings were so poetic you could read anything into them. Some are projected trends, like miniaturing digital laser discs. But how did those guys know that Mars has two moons? We might find a perfectly reasonable explanation at some point.

It's a question children ask as often as they ask why the sky is blue. Why is pee yellow? Any answer outside of "I don't know" was most likely more entertaining than the truth, which scientists have revealed to us. A previously unknown enzyme called bilirubin reductase is behind it. Bilirubin reductase is not yellow, but it factors into the process.

Our bodies are always producing new red blood cells and eliminating old ones. Old red blood cells release an orange pigment called bilirubin as they die. Several species of gut microbes in our bodies use the enzyme bilirubin reductase to break down the bilirubin into urobilinogen, which turns yellow as it degrades. Biochemists who've been studying the question for more than a century (not the same scientists) knew about bilirubin and urobilinogen, but the step in between them is the discovery that makes it all work. Those microbes producing bilirubin reductase are doing us a great favor, because too much bilirubin causes jaundice. You can read up on the experiments that revealed the new enzyme at Ars Technica.

But what if your urine isn't yellow? You might need to see a doctor.

(Image credit: Turbotorque)

The tschäggättä are villagers who roam the narrow streets of the valley, clanging bells and making mischief dressed as Sasquatch-like creatures. https://t.co/WqyozsgJti

— Smithsonian Magazine (@SmithsonianMag) January 30, 2024

Name a holiday celebrated anywhere, and there will be some kind of legendary monster associated with it. Carnival is the season of gluttony before the Christian fasting time of Lent leading up to Easter. In most places, Carnival involves parties, parades, masquerade balls, eating, drinking, and various debaucheries that will be forbidden beginning on Ash Wednesday. In Switzerland's Lötschental Valley, they have the added festivity of monsters roaming the streets.

These creatures are called tschäggättä. Villagers dress in fur with padding to make them look taller and wooden masks carved with scary human faces. They ring cowbells and make mischief that once included fights, theft, and assaults, but now involve mainly harmless teasing to folks who come out to see them. We have evidence of the tschäggättä going back more than 200 years, but the tradition could be much older. How did it start? No one, not even those who participate every year, knows. Read what we do know about the tschäggättä of the Lötschental Valley at Smithsonian.

From an individual point of view, time moves in a line from your past to the present and then into the future. All we experience is the present, but we remember the past, and anticipate the future -although we cannot know it until it is the present. But the theory of relativity states that time moves differently for beings moving through space at different speeds, so is their "present" different from ours? And how would different "presents" work? The idea of multiple presents warps the idea of an unknowable future that can be affected by the choices we make in the present. If that's too mind-blowing, maybe we should look at time in a different way to make it mesh with our lived experience. Then there's always the possibility that we are wrong, but how would we ever know? Some scientists have even weirder ideas about how time works. Kurzgesagt takes us through these ideas in ten minutes with a video full of more or less obscure cultural references you may not catch the first time around; the rest of this video is an ad. -via Digg

British novelist Wilkie Collins met Charles Dickens when they were both doing amateur theater. They became good friends, which was sometimes a drawback when critics pointed out that Collins' novels weren't as good as Dickens. Collins' may not have been as gifted as his friend, but he left a lasting legacy in his works. Collins wrote melodramatic stories in what were called "sensation novels" at the time, that were written to play to the emotions and stir a physical reaction in the reader. Many of them used supernatural elements to elicit a response, but Collins never did. His horrors were real and based on the laws of the time.

See, Collins had a law degree, even though he never practiced law. But he understood the laws of the day, and his novels incorporated them into "the worst that could happen" scenarios for women. Married women had no rights at all, even to their own property. They were at the mercy of their husbands, who, in Collins' stories, could control their autonomy and their very lives. He also explored the themes of poverty, adultery, abuse, inheritance, illegitimacy, divorce, power, and murder. His years of writing coincided with a push for reform in women's rights (which his sensation novels no doubt contributed to), and each story was carefully vetted for contemporary legal accuracy in consultation with Collins' own lawyer. Read about Collins, his works, and the changing laws involving women's rights in Victorian England at Smithsonian.

Could there be a more perfect or hilarious crossover than the Muppets doing Mad Max: Fury Road? There isn't a movie (yet), but the idea is looking pretty good in a series of 20 images by redditor InkSlinger1983 using the artificial intelligence program Midjourney. He's been working on this for some time- this is version 6.

AI still isn't all that great at recreating images of humans, which honestly is a good thing, but putting Muppets into the vehicles works because they come with their own permanent expressions that lend a certain levity to the two-hour chase scene we know as Fury Road. Muppets fit into the roles of the War Boys, the Doof Warrior, Immortan Joe, and the other drivers. InkSlinger1983 tells us he tried, but couldn't recreate Mad Max or Furiosa because Midjourney kept wanting to render them as humans.

   

See all 20 images in a slideshow at reddit, or in a one-page gallery at Geeks Are Sexy.

Some pretty high-profile crimes have been solved by examining how the perpetrators, or accused innocents, use language. The way a person uses words, grammar, and puctuation creates a personal style and vocabulary that's somewhat like a fingerprint. Linguists know how individual these styles can be, and forensic linguists detect these patterns as clues to uncovering the truth in crimes.

When I listened to this video, I was deeply impressed by what forensic linguists can do, but I could also see how we all can learn these skills with time and effort. I'm no linguist, but having dealt with the written word for so long (and the spoken word before that), I know my own writing habits and try to correct for their overuse, not always successfully. I also recognize the styles and habits of writers whose words I proofread and edit. Avid readers recognize the style of their favorite author even when the byline is different. And everyone knows when someone close to them is drunk when they are texting. Language is something we all learn as children, but the way we use it eventually gains its own personal stamp.